This invention relates to novel anticoagulant compositions prepared by treating heparin with heparinase.
Heparin is used during many medical and surgical procedures to anticoagulate patients. Heparin acts to block the coagulation cascade at various sites by interfering with a multiplicity of specific blood factors including factor X and thrombin.
It would be desirable to provide an anticoagulant which acts specifically on some but not all of the blood factors in the coagulation cascade. Such an anticoagulant would be useful clinically to treat patients having an excess of one or some of the blood coagulation factors while being inactive toward the other coagulation factors which are not produced in excess. Furthermore, such an anticoagulant would be useful clinically to assay for a specific blood coagulation factor. In addition, it would be desirable to provide such an anticoagulant having a smaller molecular weight and size than heparin since they would be capable of having a different bioavailability, clearance rates or pharmacokinetic profile than heparin.
It has been proposed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,766,167 by Lasker to utilize an anticoagulant derived by treating heparin with a mixture of heparinase enzymes. The anticoagulant material has a molecular weight of about 5300 daltons.